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Jaraii's Tetramorium Colony(s?)

tetramorium immigrans

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#1 Offline Jaraii - Posted July 11 2018 - 4:07 PM

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Alright, I'm creating this a bit late, but thought I'd get it rolling.  Pics coming soon.  I collected several queens in the areas near my home, and now the first one has a worker, so I suppose there's a good chance of a colony.

 

The more recent catches are still on eggs.  Only issue is that I had this second group in a shared container while I went to acquire test tubes, and they started laying eggs and piling them all together...  I have no idea which ones are laying fertile eggs, since they are all in 1 big pile being maintained by all the queens...  Any idea of a good way to separate them and get them some eggs without hurting the eggs/over stressing the queens?  To my understanding, having them share a setup like this doesn't work once they start having workers right?


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#2 Offline Karma - Posted July 12 2018 - 11:53 AM

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Tetramorium are generally polygynous so it's perfectly fine to have multiple queens together, in fact, this generally increases the chances of success for that colony. I'm not sure what you mean by knowing which eggs are fertile and which aren't, when queens are grouped the queens that lay the eggs are often the most dominant ones and any of the queens that do lay eggs are 100% fertile. If they aren't fertile they leave the laying of eggs to the fertile queens because there would be no reason to lay infertile eggs as they would just be eaten by the other queens. Another thing that often happens is any infertile queens will most likely be killed by the other queens, either right off the bat or down the line when workers appear so there is no reason to worry or seperate the queens whatsoever as they will handle that type of thing themselves.

 

Now as far as when the workers appear, different things can happen. The first is that the workers or other queens will start killing off the submissive queens, either all of them until the most dominant queen remains or leaving any number of queens alive. The other thing that can happen is none of the queens are killed and they all live, there's nothing you can really do to influence what happens but regardless of whatever happens you will likely get a fast growing successful colony out of this. I'd recommend not separating them and the eggs as there is no good way to do this without stressing the queens out which will likely cause them to eat the eggs or die (probably both) and the odds of having even one successful colony out of that will decrease significantly.



#3 Offline YsTheAnt - Posted July 12 2018 - 2:28 PM

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Tetramorium tends to be pleiometrophic, not polygenous. Still, exceptions have been seen.
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#4 Offline sirjordanncurtis - Posted July 12 2018 - 3:14 PM

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Tetramorium tends to be pleiometrophic, not polygenous. Still, exceptions have been seen.

 

 

When do they start culling the queens usually?


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#5 Offline YsTheAnt - Posted July 12 2018 - 4:22 PM

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Not sure on that, I think 10-20 workers.

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#6 Offline Jaraii - Posted July 12 2018 - 7:05 PM

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So, I decided to keep the grouped queens that way for the time being and see what happens.  The single queen which I caught first is still going to stay single, watching for more workers.  Planning on setting her up in a gypsum nest, still working on that.


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#7 Offline Karma - Posted July 12 2018 - 8:40 PM

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Tetramorium tends to be pleiometrophic, not polygenous. Still, exceptions have been seen.

Yes that is the term that I was looking for hahaha



#8 Offline Karma - Posted July 12 2018 - 8:43 PM

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Tetramorium tends to be pleiometrophic, not polygenous. Still, exceptions have been seen.

 

 

When do they start culling the queens usually?

 

 

 

Not sure on that, I think 10-20 workers.

 

That's probably a good estimate, one of Tetramorium colonies killed one of their three queens at 6 workers but then left the other two alone.



#9 Offline sirjordanncurtis - Posted July 13 2018 - 1:32 PM

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That's interesting. Pleometric colonies also do grow faster than colonies with only one queen sometimes, so it's sort of hard  to really tell. It's been only 4 days since nanitics, and my tetramorium colony already has 25 workers. They haven't started killing off any of the 3 queens yet, though maybe it just hasn't had enough time.


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